Instagram, who is owned by Facebook, is becoming more popular by the day, outpacing other know social sites like Twitter, Vine, and Snapchat.

I am often asked two questions:

1. Should I use Instagram?

Yes, the stats above should easily convince you of the need to be active on Instagram. It is a quickly growing platform with more users signing up and actively using it every single day.

2. Should I use video on Instagram?

The use of pictures and video is the primary reason for the success of Instagram. We live in a visual culture. People want to interact with imagery and video more than they want to read text.

This time is extremely valuable!

Video allows you to provide more detail about your product / service, give some behind the scenes action to build your brand values and allows you the opportunity to connect on a personal level with your audience.

Yes, Instagram videos are short, but that is okay. People’s attention spans on social media are typically pretty short. You can upload a maximum video length of 60 seconds on Instagram – yet you can still do a lot in that 60-second timeframe!

Due to the condensed time, it is even more valuable to adequately consider the strategy behind the video to make the best use of the time and to capture the viewer’s attention out of the gate.

We would love to provide you a FREE evaluation of your current Instagram feed and recommendations for the best use of video in your social strategy with Instagram moving forward. Shoot us an email at hello@sulastudios.com – we would love to help!

– Justin Farrell

Take a look at some samples of the best branded videos on Instagram recently:

As businesses and brands begin to grow, it can become overwhelming to keep up!

You are hiring new employees. You are launching new products. You are improving communication to your customers.

All of this requires a lot of work! And, often, it requires the same work over and over.

Most of this repetitive work can be reduced to practically nothing by introducing training videos into your workflow!

Do you notice your customer support is routinely answering the same questions over and over, whether on the phone or by email, to your client base? This confusion can be due to a lack of information that can be easily at your customer’s fingertips. Consider adding training videos to help your customers understand how to use your product or service more smoothly.

Even better, be proactive. As you are considering adding a new product to your shelf, create training videos that help your prospective customers understand the features of that new product and how it will impact their lives. These videos can help increase your sales!

Lastly, any growing team knows the pain of new employee training and training your current team on new systems, processes, or policies that are put in place. Training videos are the prescription to eliminate this pain! Training videos will help you streamline new employee onboarding, and provide a seamless avenue to train your existing team on new information they need.

Below are a couple of training videos Sula Studios put together to help Ecotality reduce some of the same tensions discussed above.

Are you experiencing any of the above pain points? If so, we would love to help you as well!

Whether you know exactly what you need, or you want help brainstorming the best options for you, let us know. We would love to connect on the phone, over email or in person to build the perfect solutions for you!

As we talked about in our recent blog post, 2017 is right around the corner!

Sure, we still have a couple of months left of 2016, but let’s be honest, those are filled with holiday celebrations, vacations and time with family. Before we all know it, we will be counting down the seconds to the new year!

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, it is still October, but with all of the busy-ness of the remaining months of the year, it is important to start preparing now to kick off the new year with a bang.

January is a great month push your product or service hard, as many people do not properly plan for the holidays and time out of the office. Once they get back in the office in January, it takes a few weeks to ramp up their efforts to promote themselves or their products/services correctly.

If you begin preparing NOW, you can beat out your competition in early January!

What is your plan for the new year? What marketing strategies are you working on to hit January powerfully?

Do you have a new product or service you are rolling out?

Do you have new trainings or vlogs you need to capture?

As you are thinking through your strategies for January, do not forget video! Video is a great tool to help you raise awareness, promote new products/services, automate your systems, and reach prospective customers.

We would love to help you! Shoot us a note at hello@sulastudios.com, and we would love to setup some time in person over coffee/lunch, or over the phone to help you think through your strategies for the first of the year!

Don’t wait – it will be here before you know it. And, by planning now, you can rest peacefully during the holidays, as you know you are already well prepared for January.

There are many platforms available to post your video to, and it can be overwhelming to know which one is the best for your application.

We are here to help.

The quick answer – all of them.

Each of these three platforms, YouTube / Vimeo / Facebook, have benefits over the other platforms, and by posting your video to each of them, you are getting the combined results of all of them working together.

Let’s break them down.

Vimeo.com

Vimeo is a powerful and very professional platform. It is a great avenue to host your videos on, especially if you are sending proofs for others to view, or embedding videos into your website. They have very robust tools to allow easy integration into your current site and allow you the ability to brand / customize the viewing experience for your users.

It has detailed analytics built in to allow you to track information about your viewers.

The downside to Vimeo is that there are additional fees for the professional levels of the software.

YouTube.com

YouTube is currently the second most searched search engine that exists, right behind Google. Interestingly, they are also owned by Google, which means there is a seamless integration of your videos appearing in search results on Google.

Due to the large traffic that YouTube receives, posting your videos to YouTube opens the door for incredible potential, allowing for millions of users to potentially find your videos organically.

YouTube has powerful search algorithms built in, and constantly shows recommended videos next to the current video they are watching. These recommendations are built on previous videos they have viewed and search terms they have entered in the past.

Due to these recommends, the average mobile viewer on YouTube spends 40 minutes watching videos, often because their attention is captured from recommended videos.

With YouTube, it is easily possible for your videos to get thousands of views from people who have never heard of you before, all based off of their searches.

Facebook.com

Facebook is currently the largest social platform that exists, with 1.13 billion active users daily. At the same time, Facebook boasts they receive 8 billion video views on average every day. In recent years, Facebook has put tremendous energy and focus towards videos and has seen video take off among users.

Posting your video to Facebook increases your social reach, and puts it in front of the eyes of your followers on Facebook. Due to the focus on video at Facebook, Facebook places your videos in front of your followers more than photo or text posts. According to Facebook, video posts get an average 135% greater organic reach than posts that contain just a photo.

By posting your videos to each of these platforms, you get the professionalism of Vimeo, the organic traffic from YouTube, and the increased social reach on your Facebook page. Together, you are getting the best impact of your video, which in return boosts your brand visibility and sales.

If you have any questions regarding these platforms, I would love to help. Shoot me an email at justin@sulastudios.com, and I would love to connect and help you through this journey.

Go to Facebook. Right now. Whether on your phone or on your computer. Once it opens, begin scrolling through your feed, and count how long it takes you to encounter a video. Most likely, within 5 seconds, you will scroll over a video. For me, I didn’t even have to scroll. The second item in my feed was a video.

It is incredible the rate at which online video is growing.

Cisco predicts that by 2017, video will make up over 69% of online traffic. According to eMarketer, consumers spent an average of 5.5 hours in front a screen watching video of some sort every day in 2015. Almost 25% of people lives were spent watching video.

According to VentureBeat, Americans watch 8,061 years of video content on YouTube every day.

These numbers are staggering, and they show the speed at which video is gaining momentum and importance in people’s lives. Video has become a powerful tool to capture a prospective client’s attention and provide them necessary information they are looking for. People would much rather watch a 1-minute video that gives them the information they are looking for, than pulling up a 300-word article and reading through it.

Last week, I was doing some work on my car. I began to dive into the project when I realized I had a couple questions regarding the process and how to reach the part I needed to replace. Without hesitancy, I pulled out my phone and did a quick Google search. The first result was a YouTube link of someone that walked me through the process. Watching that video saved me an hour on tinkering around trying to figure it out myself (and most likely breaking something else along the way).

How are you implementing video to tell your story?
How are you answering the questions your customers may have through video form?
How are you providing value to your customers with video?

These are important questions to think through because the use of video is growing and will continue to grow.

Video has long been thought of as a ‘unique’ feature for a website, something left to those with large budgets, or even a technique that has been segmented to just TV. While video has been around for a long time, it has gained incredible momentum over recent years in the digital realm.

Video used in social media gets 1200% more shares than text and images combined? That is an incredible statistic, and it shows the impact that video has in today’s society.

USA Today recently reported that Facebook has an average of 8 billion daily video views from over 500 million active users.

We live in the age of video. With the average attention span of 7 seconds, it is impossible to get people to read long amounts of text anymore, especially on social media. The key to fixing that – video.

Video allows a brand the opportunity to capture viewers attention, share a heartfelt story, and deliver necessary content – all in a short amount of time.

Video has become an integral part of digital marketing, and if your brand is not implementing it, you are leaving an enormous door open for your competitors to step in and take your place.

If video is not built into your social media and digital marketing strategies, it needs to be. We would love to help you think through the best strategies for how to implement video into your social media and digital marketing strategies.

Recently, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts from lifestyle hackers – people who strive to create the perfect lifestyle. While I know, and they understand, life is never perfect, there are many things that people do daily to improve their lifestyle. I love listening to these podcasts as they try out unique techniques and interview people who are at different stages of life to understand what works and doesn’t work for people.

One thing I have heard a lot about recently on these podcasts is meditation.

At first, I was skeptical. The thought of sitting still and ‘calming the mind’ seemed like a waste of time.

But, in an effort recently to reduce stress, I decided to give it a try. I downloaded an app called “Headspace” that advertised 10 minutes a day leads to mindfulness meditation. Again, skeptical, but willing to try.

Sit down, plug in headphones, and turn on the app. For 10 minutes, it walks you through a meditation process that is focused on breathing and concentration.

After 10 minutes each day for 10 days, though, I am no longer skeptical.

Meditation first thing in the morning has helped me clear my mind and start the day refreshed. It has helped reduce stress levels as I leave the house and have a more focused approach to my to-do list each morning. It surprised me, but it does help.

For those that have trouble falling asleep, meditation for you might be better suited in the evenings.

Mediation is not the key to fixing everything, but it is a piece of the puzzle. It seems to help me, and I think can help you.

Do you meditate? Have you ever tried it?

I would love to hear more about what works or hasn’t worked for you in the past. Leave me a comment below.

When I was in my teens, and hearing people around me say this, it never meant anything. It never truly sunk in.

“Yes, yes, I understand. Time goes by quickly. I get it. Stop reminding me.”

But I didn’t really get it.

As I get older, I begin to truly realize and understand – they were right. Life is short. Very short. You blink and another day, another week, another month have gone by.

On days like today, where I sit back and reflect on the past year, and the past quarter of a century, I am amazed and thankful at where the journey has led so far. From living in five different states, to my beautiful wife, to the opportunities to lead the best teams in the world, to reading powerful books and having the best parents & siblings one could ask for – this journey of life has been incredible so far.

It is hard to grasp that another year is closing. It is hard to let go of it as well.

But I pray that I make the most of year 26 – to do what I can to make a difference in this world.

It is hard to believe that 2015 is already behind us. The year was filled with a lot of change, adventure, fun, and growth for both Christa and myself. When we think back to January 1, 2015, we had no idea what was in store for us throughout the coming year.

Now, twelve months later, we sit over 2,000 miles away, in a different climate, in a different culture, and in a different ‘normal.’ We have made new friends. We have started new hobbies. We have seen parts of the world we never thought we would have seen.

And we are thankful for all of it.

It has been challenging. It has been stretching. It has been hard.

But, in the end, it has all been worth it, because through it all, we have grown, stretched and matured in ways that will forever impact us. We have seen God use us in ways we never thought possible to impact those around us and bring life change.

As one year has finished, a new year has begun. We welcome 2016 with arms wide open, and look forward to the journey He has in front of us.

There will be new challenges. There will be new changes. There will be new adventures.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 4:6-7

Do not be anxious about anything.

The power of a single desire of us from God. While it is often hard to grasp the fullness of this, He quickly follows up with a promise.

The peace of God… will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

The past twelve months has contained many ‘anxious’ periods, followed by a lot of change. Yet, through those periods of anxiety and change – came peace, and growth.

Every minute of it has been a learning experience, shaping me into the person I am today.

I am thankful for every moment of it.

During the summer of 2014, PayProMedia underwent a change in ownership, change in name (212 Media Studios), and change in my personal role for the company – transitioning into the CEO seat. While I am extremely thankful for the trust and guidance from the new ownership, I quickly learned that I was not the best fit for the role and future growth of the company.

Early January 2015, I stepped aside to let someone more skilled run 212 Media Studios. I have had the incredible pleasure of still being ‘part’ of 212 Media Studios, even to this day, assisting in anyway they need.

At the time of this transition, I returned to the PayProTec offices, to link arms with an incredible team and work to take huge steps in innovation and payment processing. These past five months have been filled with a lot of learning, new challenges, and the formation of strong relationships.

Yet – He made it clear that He is not done with us.

Another period of anxiety came upon Christa and I.

The peace of God… will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Through many prayers and the guidance of those wiser than us, we feel this peace. The peace, to following His leading.

This June, my wife and I will be packing up the contents of our apartment in Warsaw, Indiana, and will be transitioning across the US to the greater Phoenix, Arizona area, where I will be joining the team at Sun Valley Community Church as their Communications Director.

I am excited to bring my passions for storytelling and ministry together – to use the skills He has given me to spread His good news.

We are truly excited about this new journey in our lives. We are excited to experience a new culture, and to branch out of our comfort zone to form new relationships.

Yet, it won’t be easy. It already hasn’t been.

But the peace of God will guard our hearts and our minds. He already has.